It was another holiday-shortened week on Wall Street, and volume was light as a result. Combine that with little economic news of note, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI 1.63%) fell just 8.42 points this week. Next week the market will be back to a more normal flow, and earnings season will begin as well. Following are the three stocks that had the best week on Wall Street.
Disney (DIS 0.97%) led the Dow by a wide margin after gaining 2.4%. The animated feature Frozen nearly stole the top spot at the box office last weekend with $28.8 million in domestic ticket sales. That's impressive, considering the movie came out a month ago. This adds another asset to the likes of Marvel, Pixar, and Star Wars to generate revenue from media outlets and theme parks in the future. The box office is the first in a long line of value creators for Disney but it's also the most important part of the value chain to get right.
Goldman Sachs (GS 0.19%) was up 1% to start the year. It could be a tumultuous year if regulators turn their attention from JPMorgan Chase, which paid billions in fines last year, to other banks this year. Goldman Sachs has always seemed to be above the fray and has thus far avoided much fallout from the financial crisis, but we don't know what will pop up next year. Of course, that doesn't mean bank stocks won't do well, as JPMorgan displayed last year.
Third on the Dow this week was IBM (IBM 1.89%), which was up 0.8%. IBM was the worst performer on the Dow last year, but it comes into 2014 with interesting prospects. The stock trades at 12.9 trailing earnings and 10.4 times what analysts expect for this year. If IBM can perform better in 2014, this could be a leading stock on the market. That will likely depend on what corporate spending does and if the global recovery takes hold, but there could be worse ways to play a recovery than a tech power like IBM.
